Rolling Lounge

Rolling Lounge (short form: RL; Sometimes also RLD [from the unofficial addition "Discord" to the server name], pronounced ˈrəʊlɪŋ laʊnʤ) is a community (interest based) server founded in January 11th 2018 by Gems Power and owned by SHAvibe. It is also the center of the Rolling Lounge Network. The server has served and still serves a central place for international Rolling Sky players to chat about the game. After Rolling Sky's death, the server topic core was changed to the community and its interests, which added more topics. It has also partnered with 3 Rolling Sky Fanmades, "Rhythm Join", "Rolling Sky Remake" and "Rolling Fanmade".

After its foundation by Gems Power and ownership by SHAvibe, the server had grown due to its unique addition of challenges for the three games Rolling Sky, Dancing Line and Dancing Ball. The server was promoted on YouTube and got a large community in a short time. This also set the start of several problems, such as raiders and hackers invading the server. This community expanded in the Reflex Games Discord era, where more promotion came in place due to several more YouTubers joining. The community decided to make itself stronger and several community projects as signs of unity and friendship arised. Another game, the sequel of Rolling Sky, "Rolling Dream" shaped the era, where the server played as beta tester application hub. However, the influx of members caused issues in the community and server wars as well. In October of 2018, Dancing Line and Dancing Ball were abandoned to prioritize Rolling Sky and its sequel to start the Rolling Sky Discord era, where the server experienced its peak in activity and members. The server was the center of everything Rolling Sky related on Discord. This lasted until Rolling Sky's status declined and due to a dissatisfaction, the server got rid of Rolling Sky as a central topic and instead turned into a community interest based server to start the Rolling Lounge Era in January of 2020. Due to dramas the staff team had broken apart and fell into a de facto anarchy which arised a lot of problems for the server and its community, which was then resolved in the 2nd half of 2020 with the goal to restore a reasonable server experience, which is still going on as of now.

Rolling Lounge is the biggest Rolling Sky related Discord server on Discord; It has an own server economy and a network structure built around it. Before and after the ban of Cheetah Mobile apps, Rolling Lounge served and serves as a download archive with the newest versions of Rolling Sky (related games) being posted in it in form of Android Package Kits. As a developed server it features a stable management system and a set of rules and terms of use. It's also used as a place to get support and other help regarding Rolling Sky related topics. Rolling Lounge has signed a friendship contract with MediaPlay Discord.

Foundation - Reflex Games Discord
This time of the server was when the basic structure of the server was built and had taken a shape. This lasted around one month from the foundation of the server (January 11th, 2018) to the (February 12th, 2018) when Reflex Games Discord built upon the basic structure and stabilized it together with a general expansion of the server, making it ready for a bigger community inhabitation. The server was founded by a group of people from the old Rolling Sky Discord founded in 2017 as this group had an idea of making a server where people could host and play challenges about two (three, including Dancing Ball) games by Cheetah Games, Rolling Sky and Dancing Line. As SHAvibe, a popular Rolling Sky and Dancing Line content creator was a part of that group, growing it would be possible quite easily. Therefore the server was founded on January 11th 2018 by one of the group members, Gems Power who gave the ownership to SHAvibe right away. The members of the group joined after and some were given staff permissions to set things up properly, where upon basic setup people were publicly invited outside of Discord through SHAvibe's showcase of the Rolling Sky level "Cloud". This caused the member count to increase, as the server managed to reach 100 members in around one week already.

The first challenges were also introduced at this time. The concept of challenges is that a challenge host/manager gives out a specific mission to be completed inside of a game, which is then submitted to gain rewards depending on how fast the challenge is completed. This concept was taken by the biggest Dancing Line server at that time, Dancing Line Discord, and was applied to not only one game (Dancing Line) but three games (Rolling Sky, Dancing Line and Dancing Ball). A level would be given where you had to reach a specific percentage in that level along with other parameters (like crowns and gems in Rolling Sky). Depending on your speed of completion, you'd get a server-wide currency called "Points" which placed you higher in a public leaderboard. The management system was not a structured system at the beginning of the server yet. Instead, a handful of people who offered their help got access to administration roles which they then used to help the owner with setting up the server. Various people in this old management system were Chorl Fate, EmmaCat, GemsPower and TNTBlower. This was changed until the server had reached 120 members, where a staff team system was established, starting with the first official staff AZMindroma.

The server's start was quickly followed with arising problems. A raider with the name "MLG Dancing Line", one who was also an issue in the Rolling Sky community inside of Discord already, had targeted this server and began spamming the then against everyone ping unprotected server with mention spam and general raiding. As one account got banned, the raider used Virtual Private Networks to come back, but it was unknown where the raider was provided with the invite links and the possibilities to rejoin, as it was seen like the raider was expected to be a very young person due to the maturity they had shown. This problem was not solved for a long time until the problem was identified in the Reflex Games Discord Era.

Reflex Games Discord
Reflex Games Discord was the start of the stable server eras, where there was usually a developed server environment and community which had given the server a specific direction. The direction then stayed in the server until a new era came, which changed the fundamentals of the server. Several major events happened in this era contrary to the time before, and it was also met with a big popularity spike. This era's topics were Rolling Sky, Dancing Line and Dancing Ball, as it could be seen in the logo designed for it. This era lasted from February 12th, 2018 to October 3rd, 2018 when Rolling Sky Discord replaced the era. While SHAvibe was the main advertiser for the server before Reflex Games Discord, the Reflex Games Discord era added more YouTubers to the server willing to advertise it in their YouTube Channels, such as Tuan Nguyen. Due to a big Discord Server having Rolling Sky as topic was not present at that time and due to the ability to speak with the YouTubers, it seemed benefitial to join the server / join Discord by itself, as many people had created Discord accounts just for joining the server. The already existing community of the server Pre-RGD was expanded, but in a much larger scale than before. Due to the big influx of members to the server, a lot of people also decided to expand their activity in the server, which didn't only include talking about the server topics, but more personal topics inbetween the community members and the making of friends. Asides from concentrating solely on the server topics, the community started making itself an attraction as well, making a place where even people who didn't play the server games could have a place in. So, Reflex Games Discord was the first era where member bonds were made. This was also shown with several community projects being made and family pictures being drawn for the server. Due to the growth of the community, the potential staff candidates also increased, and therefore the staff team was greatly expanded under the new staffing system in this era. The first people also began to get promoted to admin, such as Dzeus, AZ and Tuan Nguyen. Asides of the staff team, an event team was also established which was solely responsible for making challenges, as those were now revamped and improved to increase the user experience. Under this management, RGD was well taken care of with moderation, communitation and interactivity all being covered.

Rolling Dream, the sequel of Rolling Sky entered its beta stages in 2018. Once the beta had opened, several YouTubers posted this announcement to their channels and to the RGD announcement channels. Since RGD was the biggest non-chinese community about Rolling Sky so far, it can be assumed that the developers of this new game gave SHAvibe and Tuan Nguyen the job of getting beta testers for the game in the non-chinese sector of the community. This function has been given to RGD, where people would be required to submit their Apple ID in a special channel to be able to reveive a Testflight invitation. Because entering the server was mandatory for the submission, this caused one of the biggest member spikes in all of the server's history, getting it to 2000 members.

While the MLG Dancing Line issue had been solved by the staff team using a logging method to find out who invited MLG Dancing Line which turned out to be a member called Khoai, with the huge popularity spike of Reflex Games Discord an account had joined the server which claimed to be an official Rolling Sky Developer. The RGD community believed this for a little while until the user was exposed of being fake, where upon exposal the user began to raid the server, mainly insulting the community and especially the owner, SHAvibe. Following their ban, a series of accounts joined in the same way as the previous raider MLG Dancing Line did, however their raids were worse, since they also included 18+ content (Not Safe For Work, NSFW) which had disturbed the community. There have also been claims that towo had the ability to hack accounts, though this hasn't been 100% confirmed. For a big part of the Reflex Games Discord era, towo was the biggest issue which was mainly resolved by bans. Reflex Games Discord was also an era which was significantly shaped by drama due to the community's young average age. People had made several smaller dramas about topics which weren't worth making dramas about, and there have also been conflicts with other servers due to trashtalking which happened from both sides which gave the core communities of both servers a bad image to each other. Those issues were partially resolved, but continued in some way or another in later eras.

Rolling Sky Discord
Rolling Sky Discord was the pinnacle of the server's existence in terms of activity, community size and strength, activities and more. This era has changed the server and its influx still holds until today. This era lasted from October 3rd, 2018 to January 25th, 2020. After some time of its existence, the management and the community of Reflex Games Discord had discovered several issues with the contents of the server. The issues were that Dancing Ball lost relevance drastically and problems with other servers arised due to the existence of Dancing Line as a main game, as another server had it as a main topic already. Because of this, both Dancing Line and Dancing Ball were removed as topics from the server once this era started. With the removal of Dancing Line and Dancing Ball, their dedicated challenge channels were also removed, leaving only Rolling Sky challenges. That's why Rolling Sky challenges were expanded drastically, as a new Challenge Manager team under the rulership of RoyalMike had formed and gone through intensive planning for events. The currency $RGD was renamed to $RSD and several other currencies were added, which were used to buy different items. The Challenge Manager team added several new modes to the challenges adding twists and tricks, which made them far more varying and interesting. This increased the participator amount by a lot and therefore the Challenge Manager team put intensive work in creating a Google Spreadsheet showing the entire leaderboard of RSD. In this era, Weeklies were introduced as well, challenges that were hosted every week instead of every day. Due to them appearing less often, the challenges required more time to beat and also rewarded the winners more. Unique to the Weeklies was the role "Challeader", which was given to the winner of the current Weekly challenge. The community reached its peak size during the Rolling Sky Discord era, reaching ~2500 members at its maximum. Due to its name and defined topic, people could identify if the things that they would like to talk about was included in the server and therefore made the server more attractive. With the growth of the community, the YouTube Content Creators inside the server also increased. One encouragement for joining the server was the presence and for the first time, activity of official Rolling Sky developers outside of Chinese chatting applications. Though the first Rolling Sky Officials already had joined the server in its first major era "Reflex Games Discord", they showed little to no activity. In the RSD Era however, the activity of the officials increased by a bit, causing an incredibly large amount of people to join the chat and try to interact with the officials. While there were a lot of people who solely chatted about Rolling Sky (and its sequel) or people who didn't chat often, there were also a lot of people who befriended each other in the server, expanding the core community of the server. This core community almost solely used Rolling Sky Discord to chat in all of Discord and built a lot of projects together to increase the community feeling or benefit the server in any other way. Notable projects were the continuation of the Family Pictures and the extreme growth of the Rolling Sky Discord Community YouTube Channel. Many other "unofficial" artworks were drawn for the server and a website dedicated to RSD was also in the works.

Raiding problems continued in the RSD Era, with two figures, towo and Ramesh being the biggest issues coming from outside the server. However, due to its peak of activity and community size, Rolling Sky Discord suffered from a lot of drama coming from inside the server. A lot of arguments happened at this time for various reasons, may it be because of Rolling Sky, specific moderation measures taken against members, people feeling disrespected and more. Some dramas in this era also caused parts of the core community to either temporarily or permanently take their leave from the server.

Rolling Lounge
Rolling Lounge got rid of Rolling Sky as a central topic and instead prioritized the community, using their interests as a base of the topics present in the server. As the year 2019 progressed, the Rolling Sky community's satisfaction with each update started to decrease. The levels seemed to lose quality, and the philosophy of Rolling Sky's developers which made rare reuse of special game mechanics and no new interesting, game-changing ones made the community desperate for the developers to listen more to suggestions. The community did a lot of suggestions and people in closer contact with the developers transmitted those suggestions to them, however only one suggestion was implemented, it being a relatively insignificant one. That's when the community started a type of strike/boycott against Rolling Sky('s developers) and wanted to start a new server era independent from Rolling Sky as main topic. A referendum was held and as result, the server was rebranded to a community server. A lot of channel changes were done as a result of the change of the server, but ultimately, it didn't seem like a proper rebrand due to the same icon being used generally, no big changes being seen. The rebrand seemed to be done prematurely as there wasn't much of an idea about what to do with the server now, and due to a giant drama in the management team, server development was immensely slowed down. As a result, the events quickly became very inactive and there wasn't much going on in the server anymore. With an unstable staff and event team, a substitute staff was searched to help continue the server development, and so eventually, one with the name of "Skye" was added. A new community had built itself up, which partially consisted of Rolling Sky Discord Core community members who were holding on, and friends of the new staff Skye. This boosted server activity despite the community size shrinking, as the few ones who were in the community were very active in it, making Rolling Lounge their "home", just like the previous core communities did. However, this community overtook the base community due to the 18+ (Not Safe For Work/NSFW) topics being one of the biggest topics due to a lack of moderation. In other servers the new change was receptioned very negatively. As a result, one part of the staff team (the ones against the Pre-Nuke segment) wanted to break up with Rolling Lounge. Parts of the second part (the ones who were for the Pre-Nuke segment) recognized at this part that an unity had to be restored as soon as possible, as this break up would also break up the entire community, so they tried to unify the staff team again. As a conclusion, a staff which had been seen as problematic and responsible for the current state of the server would need to get fired from the staff team so that the original team could reunite and start working on Rolling Lounge from scratch. While in the process of firing the staff however, they had given staff roles to their friends and started to kick people, delete channels and mass create roles out of rage. The staff and their nuke associates were quickly banned.

The whole staff team was satisfied with its position in the server now and the split-up idea was scrapped. They began to work on the server from scratch again and new staff policies were added. Parts of the older community partially started to return to the server and chat again. The goal of the staff team now was to complete the premature transition from Rolling Sky Discord to Rolling Lounge. As a result, the server fundamentals remade from scratch. As the community's only interests didn't only consist of Rolling Sky, the interests of the community were inspected and support for them was added by the server which at that time included the 4 games/categories Cookie Run, Geometry Dash, Minecraft and Rhythm Games. The server started to slowly rebuild its reputation again, causing members who had previously shown hate to the server to rejoin the community and also partially become active again. Smaller events featuring the community were added, however, there hadn't been a event/currency remake yet, which was just started in 2021 under the name of "Project Amelioration" (Amelioration meaning "making some bad better"). This project caused the creation of a new central currency called Rolling Tokens (RT) and the removal of other currencies except of Gems (serving as an item able to get one of many items from the shop for free). At the time of reparation, Rolling Sky had already found its end of life and therefore projects had been founded in remaking it from scratch with an inbuilt editor. The first project which had already been in the works for longer was called "Rhythm Join" by Small Garfield, which commited a partnership with the server, serving as the official server for the game. Later the game Rolling Sky Remake by Pão and "Rolling Fanmade" also found their way partnering with Rolling Lounge, making Rolling Lounge an important hub for these 3 Rolling Sky Fanmades.

Management
Rolling Lounge's management system is a technocratic consitutional sectored monarchy with occassional democratic details - there's a permanent owner at the top of the hierarchy, with an administration and a staff team elected by existing staff based on their skills in specific sectors of server management. New staff are chosen once a new application process starts in the server - causes for one to happen is mostly demand for new help due to the lack of staff (activity) compared to the management that the server needs. Depending on their skills, they get accepted in a specific management sector where the management is done. The legislative power is vested in the administration team which is either elected by the existing administrators or the community. This team consists of staff members leading a server management sector, such as Moderation or Community Management. The Rolling Lounge management system operates under a framework first laid out in 2018, the separate Staff Rules.

SHAvibe is the owner of the server, but due to being On Leave of Abscence, the power of representative responsibilities and powers was handed over to the administration team. He is not elected or changed, the role of ownership has stayed the same ever since the existence of the server. The second-highest official in Rolling Lounge's order of precedence is the Administrator+, who is chosed by the owner to represent the administration team and give the ability to manage their roles. Currently, TheMaster has that role. The third-highest officials and the heads of the server is the administration team which includes all officials mentioned above. This team consists of SHAvibe, TheMaster, Matt2813, AL164, RoyalMike and AZMindroma. They are substituded by the Head Staff which is then followed by the Official Staff Team.

The Staff Team was unified as one central management entity in 2021, where beforehand the Staff and Event Team were separated. Due to the diversity of jobs required by the management, sectors were created to give staff a general orientation to concentrate on rather than trying to taking care of all jobs. There are 5 sectors:


 * Community Management: Community Management is a sector which has the function of ensuring healthy communication between server members and the server management, and inbetween server members as well. This is used to inform the staff team of any ongoing issues or events in the server which can then help adjusting of the server to adapt to these changes. This sector is lead by AZMindroma.
 * Configuration: The Configuration sector has the function of configurating technical structure of the server. This includes setting up and managing bots, roles, permissions, channels, permissions and more. This sector usually doesn't require much activity in the server but rather activity in management of these structures. This sector is lead by TheMaster.
 * Moderation: Moderation is the classical sector of making sure that the environment in the server is appropiate and according to the server's rules and Terms of Use. People who do not follow the rules are then reminded by the moderators either through warns, mutes or bans. This sector is lead by Matt2813 and deputed by LongH.
 * Event Management: Prior a separate team, the Event Management segment is responsible for all sorts of events going on in the server. This is mostly done by the hosting and managing of challenges about Rolling Sky (related games), but also includes other server events. This sector is lead by RoyalMike and deputed by Noah 99556.
 * Innovation Management: Being the newest sector, Innovation Management concentrates on purely suggesting and implementing ideas to help improve the server for its future. This sector requires a creative mind with the ability to properly implement ideas in a beneficial way. This sector is lead by SHAvibe.

Rolling Lounge Network
Rolling Lounge is the center of the Rolling Lounge Network, a new system of server management introduced in November 21th of 2021. Previously, all topics of Rolling Lounge (such as Rolling Sky Remake, Rolling Fanmade, Rhythm Join, Rolling Sky, etc.) had been compressed inside of one server, which raised signficant problems in terms of community and channel management. Therefore, Rolling Lounge was turned into a network instead of just a server and spread to a total of four topic-specific servers, the so called Districts. The servers were made accessible through a portal channel inside of all Rolling Lounge Network servers. The districts are built similarly to Rolling Lounge itself in terms of channel and permission systems. The districts also share the same Terms of Use and Community Guidelines as the center, although it is possible for the district to add extended rules on their own depending on their demand.

The managements of the network districts are not the same; although high ranked staff members inside of Rolling Lounge have the ability to gain management rights in all of the Network. A parliament is planned to be introduced inside of Rolling Lounge where staff ranked Official Staff and higher can discuss network matters together, although it hasn't been done yet due to the management of the new districts not being fully established yet. This all applies for First Degree Districts, the parts of Rolling Lounge which are accessible for everyone. The Network also includes an extended district system which is restricted to people who are over Level 10 in Rolling Lounge. They do not dependent on Rolling Lounge and are built in a different way channel and permission wise, although they still officially belong to the Rolling Lounge Network due to their relevancy in parts of the community.

External relations
Rolling Lounge practices a server friendship with MediaPlay Discord, owned by TechNewVideo.

Rolling Lounge hadn't practiced the concept of server partnerships or server friendships due to the disappeal in the concept of it. It was seen that the server was the only one of its size and its topics for which no servers to potentially partner with could be found. Though it was sometimes considered building up better relations with Dancing Line Discord, it was never done in an official way. This was until former staff member TechNewVideo founded MediaPlay Discord which would show itself as a successful community server. The community had a major influx of Rolling Lounge Members who decided to either abandon Rolling Lounge in favor of the server or become active in both servers. Due to this shared community, the communities eventually brought up ideas of combining or partnering Rolling Lounge and MediaPlay Discord since they had a lot in common. The idea was often seen in a critical way as a merge of both servers was thought to cause controversy, though the idea of a partnership was widely requested from both sides. The server representatives of both servers, AZMindroma and MediaPlay Discord discussed about the idea of a partnership which was approved by both.

On December 10th of 2021, TechNewVideo opened a new server partnership system called MPD Solutions, which was created in favor to create a separate space for servers which were bigger and more organized. Through a direct message to TechNewVideo, the partnership between Rolling Lounge and MediaPlay Discord was sealed.

Events and Economy
As it was the reason for the server's creation, Rolling Lounge features a wide amount of events. Events are split up in two major categories: Challenges and Casual Events. Challenges are events in which a participant must show a specific skill in something to complete the challenge. This also includes minigames, as they also show an appearance in the server. Challenges have their own category in the server and happen in a regular way due to a dedicated management team for it, though the challenges are not bound to being always constant. Casual Events deck a wider spectrum of the events in Rolling Lounge, as their definition range is big. Casual Events do not require any excessive effort to win or do not require any engagement at all. They can be regular and irregular and there is often no dedicated team for the organization of them, but individuals who decide to host that event.

Challenges have different modes, 4 of them listed below:
 * Dailies - Within a week, each day featured a different challenge about Rolling Sky is hosted. This challenge type has been in tact (although with breaks) since the beginning of the server and are a key aspect to the server's challenge economy. Dailies feature different challenge modes which change the way the challenge procedure is done. Completing dailies in succession adds to a Streak count to increase the rewards gotten from the challenges.
 * Weeklies - Once a week, a weekly challenge which is also about Rolling Sky is hosted. Unlike dailies, these challenges consist of a series of mini challenges, single tasks which take an amount of time, or contests. After a week, the winner of the weekly challenge receives a special role called Challeader.
 * Thinking Corner - Occasionally, riddles or puzzles are hosted which do not Rolling Sky skills but general riddle solving knowledge, making this type of challenge attractive for members who are in the server but don't play Rolling Sky.
 * Art Contests - Art contests try to reach out to the creative community inside of Rolling Lounge by handing out topics to which the task is to make an artistic piece to it (E.g. Artworks, Literature etc.). While they are more irregular, they usually give more rewards due to the effort needed to complete these challenges.

Casual Events are more abstract, some of them include:
 * Hardmode - An event which was hosted twice with different rounds where members get prompted to follow a specific rule while chatting in a specific channel (e.g. no capitalization, an emoji at the end of sentence) accompanied with a message requirement. This makes it difficult to talk without thinking much of the requirements. A violation of the rules results in a disqualification from the event. The event ends once there is only one person left standing.
 * RLIV - This was an Among Us inspired event featuring server members inside of a spaceship with one of them being an imposter. The community votes one person out every day until the imposter gets voted out and the event is won. Clues on the imposter is given by stories provided by the host to give the members an idea of who to vote.

Currency
Rolling Lounge has a primary virtual currency called Rolling Tokens (abbreviated: RT). It was introduced as a part of Project Amelioration in March of 2021. The main income for RTs are challenges, though casual events or giveaways also may serve as an income source. There is also a command which can be used to gain RT easily, although the gaining rate is low. With participating in daily challenges, an income of around 1000 RT per week can be expected. The usage of this currency is to buy items from the Shop.

The shop is a place where it's possible to buy virtual items and supports to benefit yourself inside of the server. The shop has 4 segments:
 * 1) The 1st shop includes items that can be used to support the participant inside of all events. They make challenges easier to handle or increase your income for a challenge done.
 * 2) The 2nd shop includes items that also can be used for support in events, but are event-specific. They make participation and specific challenge types easier to complete.
 * 3) The 3rd shop includes items that benefit the participant inside of the server itself, events excluded. This shop gives users the ability to add Custom Bot commands, custom YouTube notifications or even Discord Nitro.
 * 4) The shop also features a 4th segment where limited-time offers get added, mostly depending on current events, such as festivals and holidays.